Table of Contents

Aqsis Renderer: User Manual

Before editing/submitting any content be sure to read the About section on the Index page first.

Contents

Part I: The Aqsis Tools

  1. Getting Started
  2. Using the Aqsis Tool Suite
  3. Aqsis and the RI Standard: Implemented Features and Extensions
  4. Further Reading

Part II: Aqsis Programmers Guide

  1. Building From Source - FIXME: make sure all remaining relevant instructions from [dev:build_aqsis] get into this page.
  2. Using the RenderMan Interface C API FIXME: Update this to be relevant to aqsis-1.4
  3. The Display Driver API
  4. Creating DSO Shadeops FIXME: clean up document after recent move from [guide:dsoshadeop]
  5. Examining compiled shaders FIXME
  6. Texture library reference FIXME

Part III: Renderman Tutorials and Examples

  1. Tutorials Here we can put simple “bite-sized” examples of the different commonly-used features available to a renderman implementation. The point would be to make such examples as simple as possible, ideally only demonstrating one feature, or set of closely related features at a time. This part of the docs is probably best focussed toward the interested hobbyist.
    • Here is an initial list of ideas, by no means comprehensive.
    • Hello world The generic simple RIB - eg, sphere-on-a-plane with default shaders.
    • Transformations and coordinate systems Coloured cylinders to show the default coordinate frame, and the results of (1) camera transformations and (2) object transformations
    • Cameras camera types, arguments and positioning
    • Lights RiLightSource and RiIlluminate
    • Geometry patches, a few quadrics, some polygons and an SDS - must be examples which can be coded into the RIB file by hand.
    • Displays and Sampling RiDisplay, RiFormat, RiPixelSamples, RiPixelFilter
    • Shadow Maps sphere on a plane
    • Motion Blur motion blur with a sphere
    • RI Begin/End Blocks and Graphics State Attribute and Transformation blocks; graphics state
    • simple surface shading Lambertian diffuse lighting with a simple procedural texture. A version with a fake “camera light” and a version with proper RiLightSources
    • simple displacement shading A procedural noise-driven bumpy texture.
    • Light shaders A spotlight with a custom shape (procedural or texture-driven?)
    • Volumetric shading A simple fog attenuation shader, or maybe a very simple ray-marching shader.
    • Texture map usage Working with texture maps: teqser, and a simple shader using the RSL texture() call.
  2. Example Content
    • Here we can place more complicated scenes; ones which require assets from external tools such as modellers for example. Here would be an appropriate place to explain the content directory in the aqsis distribution.
    • vase
    • microbe Describe the “microbe” scene?
    • Visualizing scientific volume data For example…
  3. External Tools